


the difference between shooting stars and satellites

by lunick



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, Maybe a little angst, sorta? i guess a little i'm not really sure tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 18:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunick/pseuds/lunick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanai's life is filled with boundaries that Tajima doesn't even consider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the difference between shooting stars and satellites

**Author's Note:**

> based on a thing i heard in a really dorky podcast (I'M NOT SAYING WHAT IT IS BC PEOPLE WILL LAUGH). title is from the song "passenger seat" by death cab for cutie.

Hanai's life is filled with boundaries that Tajima doesn't even consider.

He's constantly misstepping, false starting, and toeing the starting line, working out all the ways something could go wrong in his head and closing himself off to the possibilities of himself. If he thinks something can't be done, it almost certainly cannot be -- he cannot hit a home run, he cannot be as good as Tajima, and he cannot be seen as weak or immature or any of those other negative characteristics that taunt him.

He sets his limits so clearly in his own mind that it closes all doors and locks all the windows and it ends up infecting all other aspects of himself and his body, and it ends with him sealing up his desires and his passion in the deepest corners of his heart before walling the entire thing in altogether, and it makes his muscles tense in ways that they aren't supposed to, preventing him from doing the things he knows he wants.

And it was that sealing of his heart and the locking down of his mind that made him claim to be not so interested in baseball anymore, until he was forced to swallow his pride by that female coach, and until he realized that there were people who didn't think like he did. Like Tajima, who could hit any pitch, could stay loose in any situation no matter how stressful, and could always find the flaw in the other team's defense.

Hanai wants to say that Tajima had no boundaries whatsoever, that they were just nonexistent and that the kid was so blindly optimistic that he thought anything was possible, the very idea of which made Hanai's skin crawl, but he knew that that's not true.

He knew, from the way Tajima said he could do things and then proceeded to actually do them, that the third baseman was pleasantly optimistic and maybe a bit lucky. But he also knew, by the way he passed on things in the simplest way like when he said that there was no way he could pitch like Mihashi because that took years of experience, that he also had clearly set boundaries for himself.

They were just so far off from anything that Hanai could ever imagine. If his were at sea level, Tajima's were at the top of a mountain that the captain was certain he could not climb.


End file.
